A/N Thanks to all of you who have reviewed my story so far. It makes me want to keep writing! Feedback is like food for my writing mind, so keep them coming. Oh, swearing in this chapter. I knew I rated it R for a reason! This chapter is a little short, but I am working on more as you read this ;-)

Remembered Pain

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He was sleeping when they went into his room.

Fred laid his bag beside the box she had brought the day before, laid his keys on the bag

As Faith stood in the doorway, looking at him, at the bandage at his throat, images strobed through her mind. Sharp fragments, like glass. Fragments of pain. Pain like that which she had caused this man. And now he would have yet another scar to bear.

She couldn't take it. The big tough slayer. The con the other prisoners had steered clear of. Not for the violence that she had done, but because of the vibe that she threw off. The don't-fuck-with-me vibe. Faith, tough as nails. Who had lived through a knife wound to the stomach with her own weapon.  This was the girl that couldn't stand there in that hospital room. She couldn't stand there and look at him. Weak and pale, and lost. He looked so lost, even in sleep. It nearly wrenched her heart in two.

She turned and fled.

Fred, without Gunn, caught up with her in the hall. Gunn had refused to come in. He was waiting out by his truck. Something was very, very wrong, Gunn not coming in. But Faith wasn't thinking about that now. She was too busy thinking about her watcher, and concentrating too hard on trying to breathe. It physically hurt to do it. Why? Faith remembered torturing him. Remembered how stoic he had been. Remembered the pain she had caused. She had never wanted him to feel that again.

Yet here he was. In pain again.

Faith drew in a deep breath, remembering how at last.

"Are you alright, Sarah?"

Faith almost bit her head off for using the wrong name when she remembered that Sarah was the name she had given them.

"I'm fine, thank you, Fred. I just  . . . he just looked so weak. Are you sure he's going to be all right?"

"That's what the doctors say. He can even go home, in a day or so. Are you sure that you don't want to wait until he wakes up?"

"No thanks." Faith ran her hands through her curls. "I think I'll let him rest and come back when I do the same."

She turned to walk away, trying to figure out where she'd stay that night.

"Do you have a place to stay?" The Texan asked. "Because you could come and stay with me at the hotel. But if you do, I wouldn't mention that you were related to Wesley. Things are a little strained right now. I guess we could say that you were a friend of mine . . . "

Faith cut her off, once again wondering what was going on between Wes and Angel. She had been concerned before now. Her watcher hadn't been to the prison in a while. He phoned, once a week, as always. But the calls had been brief and to the point. And always about her, lately. About her lessons, the books that he sent her. The books that made it past the mail censors, anyways. He hadn't been telling her anything about his life, and he had missed this week's phone call entirely.

But she now knew why that had happened.

And she couldn't blame him too much, because she had been keeping things from his as well. She hadn't told him about Lindsey, about the loophole, about the possibility of getting out.

They'd have to work on the communication.

"Um, Sarah?" Fred broke into her thoughts. "Do you have place to go?" The girl looked worried about Faith. The slayer guessed she would be worried too, if she was talking to someone that had just zoned out like that.

"Um yah." Going back to the hotel with Fred would not be a god idea. Certainly not. "I have someplace. I just hope Wes understands me staying at his place.

"Do you need a ride?"

"No . . . thank you. I'll be fine." With that, Faith walked away from the other women, leaving Fred staring at her back in wonder.

*          *          *          *          *

The doctor had asked him if he had someone to call to take him home. The answer to that was a resounding no.

Sometime while he had been asleep, someone had brought him a change of clothes, he could see by the bag on the chair. If he had to guess, he would have said it had been Fred. But he was still surprised that she had done that much, considering her words from the day before. "You should have come to us," and "it was all for nothing."

She couldn't have hurt him more if she had tried to smother him with a pillow, like Angel had done. The one thing that had been holding the slivered fragments of his shattered spirit together was the knowledge that what he had done had been necessary, not only to protect Connor, but to protect Angel. Angel, who was the closest thing that Wesley had to true family. Angel could have never dealt with the guilt if he had hurt his son. The vampire had a hard enough time dealing with the guilt over the things he had done as Angelus. Things that he wasn't responsible for. Wesley couldn't take the chance that the prophecy would come to pass. Angel mattered too much to him. He had given Wesley a place in the world. A place that fit. A place that felt right, more right than the Watcher's Council had ever felt.

The council had always been more about his father. Wesley was more interested in fighting the evils of the world. The pomp and circumstance of the Council of Watchers had always seemed too British, even for Wesley. But he had been young and naïve when they had assigned him to Sunnydale, to the unprecedented two slayers. It was in Sunnydale that he learnt the truth. Where he learnt what the council really was. A tool of power for Quentin Travers. It may not have started out that way when the council was founded, but that was what it had become.

There was no rhyme or reason to what Travers did. He was all about the fact that he had the ultimate control. That he held the reigns. 

Wesley had started to see that the second he learned the truth behind the dismissal of one Rupert Giles.

It had seemed ludicrous to the young watcher that Giles had been terminated for an attachment to his slayer. Would a watcher that was unattached, who wasn't invested in the life of his slayer, really be more effective?

Wesley didn't think so.

But he refused to question it outside the confines of the walls of propriety that were in his mind. Walls that had been built by his father. Wes had so wanted to make his father proud. He hadn't wanted to do anything to jeopardize his standing as a watcher, or to quell his father's pride.

After all, his father had a son who was not only an active watcher, but who had both of the slayers under his care.

Wesley thought about of all this while lying in the hospital with the bandage at his throat and the remembered pain of his father's constant disappointment running through his veins.

He wondered why it had ever mattered what his father had thought. His father had never cared what Wesley thought or felt.

Why hadn't he realized what he now knew, that he would never have his father's approval? Why hadn't the knowledge come to him when he still could have been of some help to Faith?

He should have known from the beginning that the council, that Travers, was wrong. That you needed to be attached to your slayer. Especially when they were girls like Buffy and Faith. It was Buffy's connection to those around her that had made her the historical slayer that she was. And it was the loss of the one attachment that Faith had had, to her watcher that had thrown her onto the path that had ended with her behind bars. Why couldn't Wes have thrown away the watcher's handbook sooner, when he still could have made a difference, when he could have changed Faith's path.

But he had, in the end. Even if it had been too late.

It was at this thought that Wes remembered her words that first visit with her in prison. "Be my Watcher?" And he remembered that life always gave you a second chance.

He just hoped the missed phone call this week wouldn't push Faith away.

If it did, it would be another thing that he had lost. Another price that he would have to pay for his attempt at doing the right thing. He had already lost his one true family for what he had done. He couldn't lose his slayer too. Not when she had finally come back to him, when she had finally turned to him of her own volition. Wesley had no idea why the thought of her pulling back away affected him so deeply.

It was probably the sight of the keys laid upon the bag of clothes. They were the physical confirmation that he had lost his family. An impersonal return of his emergency keys was a symbol that he had lost nearly everything. And he could not lose the one thing that he had left.

The others didn't know about Faith. Another secret that he had kept. But this one, unlike the prophecy, he was glad was his alone. He felt that if they had known, he would have lost her too.

He silently chastised himself for thinking that the others could be that spiteful.

And then he remembered the sensation of a cotton hospital pillow thrust over his face. Of his best friend stealing his life's breath with the material. Wes knew that Angel could have killed him, if he wanted, within the blink of an eye. No orderlies would have stopped him. But Wes also felt that Angel wanted to emphasize that it was the man that Wes had betrayed, so it would be the man that would end Wesley's life. That memory made him glad for the one secret that remained his.

The doctor's voice made him come back to himself. He was being released. And no, he had no one to call to take him home. But at least he had fresh clothes. It was of little comfort.